


The A in Team

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Developing Relationship, F/M, Intimacy, M/M, Multi, Not Compliant with any post-Avengers Movies, Polyamory, Rape/Non-con References, Relationship Negotiation, Team
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking the OT6 from makeouts on the couch to the bedroom hits a snag when the team discovers that Clint is asexual and, while he's a big fan of all the kissing, he's really not interested in sleeping with anyone. The team are determined not to leave him out though - they just need to find something that works for everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/11264.html?thread=25880320) at [Avengerkink](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/)
> 
> Warnings - Brief and non-explicit mention of past torture and non-con during torture. Mention of hypothetical child abuse. Mention of sex during previous relationships that might be considered dub-con as one person has no desire for sex but does it because they feel like they owe their partner and are afraid they will lose them if they don't. Consent was given but the whole situation is pretty unhealthy. Confusion and non-malicious ignorance over matters of sexuality.

In Steve’s experience, loss is always sudden. It’s a telegram with the War Office’s name at the top, or it’s a hand reaching out for yours that you can’t catch hold of, or it’s freezing cold water rushing up past your ears and it’s sudden and it’s painful and it leaves you feeling hollowed out and numb inside.

Filling those hollow places up again takes far longer. You walk around carrying that emptiness with you wherever you go and almost forget what it’s like not to feel like a ghost in your own life. You get so used to feeling that way that you don’t even notice when things start to get easier. Slowly at first, aching from it, you just keep moving forwards and then one day you look around at the place you are now and you can’t quite remember the first thing that began to filter through and ease that emptiness.

This thing between the six of them feels a lot like that. He can’t quite put his finger on when it starts or who it starts with, but one day he looks around and it’s somehow perfectly normal to wander into the communal kitchen area in the morning and have Tony plaster himself against his back as Steve makes coffee. Normal for Thor to stroke a hand down his cheek and smile softly as they pass in the corridor.

As time has passed, the people in their lives have fallen away one by one until only the six of them are left. Friendships outside of the team are as important as ever, but relationships never seem to last. First Jane, then whoever Natasha had been seeing, and then, finally, Pepper and that had been the most painful of all. They had all gathered a little closer around Tony after that and breathed a sigh of relief when Rhodey had immediately flown in to take care of him in ways that Tony wouldn’t tolerate from anyone else.

Even Steve tried for a while. Pepper would set him up with strong women and sweet men and Sam would appoint himself wingman, but in the end Steve simply gave up. He couldn’t hold onto anyone and it got too painful to keep trying. People can say that they understand, that they can handle it, but it never seems to matter. In the end, the six of them are on their own.

Steve doesn’t mind this like he thought he would. He’s used to being part of a team, a unit, of relying on a small group of people and making them his entire world. This is familiar to him when it begins and by the time it has wandered into the distinctly unfamiliar, he finds himself unable to care.

Because this thing developing between them might be different or strange, or even _wrong_ according to some people, but it means he gets to pull Clint down onto the couch and tuck him close and warm against his side while they watch a movie. It means he gets to see the way Bruce smiles when Tony slides fingers into his curls and kisses him over morning coffee. It means he gets to watch Natasha climb into Thor’s lap and curl against his chest with none of the walls that she’s so painfully careful to maintain around everyone else. It means he gets to see them all feel safe with one another.

It also means he gets to walk into the common area and find Tony and Clint making out on the couch like teenagers. Clint stretched across Tony with his hands pinned above his head and kissing him lazily in total contrast to the uncompromising hold he has on Tony’s wrists. He gets to see the way Clint’s eyes snap open as soon as Steve enters the room and the warmth in them when he realises who it is. He gets to join them when Clint rolls off of Tony and beckons Steve over, Steve taking his place on top of a smirking Tony and Clint happily sandwiched between them and the back of the couch as they kiss.

It’s all leading towards something and they all know it. No one has said anything so far and Steve is certain that it hasn’t gone any further than furtive making out in steadily increasing groups, but it can’t stay like that forever. He doesn’t _want_ it to stay like that forever and eventually he realises that his team is waiting for him to call it. For him to lead them in this just like he leads them every other time that the six of them have to work together towards a common goal.

So that’s what he does. It’s rare that all six of them are in the Tower at the same time, so he has to wait, but the next time that they are all together and no one is recovering from an injury or a board meeting or a month-long mission, he calls it.

No one looks surprised. In fact, most of them just smile at him like he’s the one they’ve been waiting for all this time, which is a little embarrassing but he’s not ungrateful. He’s pretty sure that this kind of arrangement isn’t all that common even in these new times, but he’s probably the one who has needed to adjust his worldview the most before he arrives at a place where he can look around at his teammates and say, “We all just need to be in a bed together and naked.”

Tony’s suite even has a bed that will comfortably fit them all and that is just perfect enough that Steve doesn’t even let himself dwell on his suspicions about exactly _why_ Tony has a bed that large and how long Tony has been thinking about this. Thor’s hand comes to rest on the small of Steve’s back as they all make their way to the elevator and Steve shivers at the feel of it, broad and warm and immovably strong against him. He thinks about not having to hold back his own strength for the first time since the serum. About what it might be like to let go.

They’re almost at the elevator when Steve realises that Clint hasn’t moved. He’s still standing by the breakfast bar and watching them with troubled eyes.

Tony notices about the same time as Steve and grins back. “Hey, Hawk, sleepover’s at mine and my mom says you can stay over. You coming or not?”

Clint stares back at them and Steve can’t read the expression on his face. He’s only wearing a thin t-shirt and it’s easy to see the muscles in his arms clench and release and clench again like he’s struggling with something.

Steve takes a step towards him. “Clint?”

“No,” Clint says after a couple of seconds, his voice quiet and steady but his eyes widening a little, as if he’s surprised by what he’s saying. “No, I’m not. I don’t want to do that.”

“Are you injured, my friend?” Thor asks, sounding concerned.

Clint’s mouth curls a little, but if it’s a smile it’s not like one Steve has ever seen from him before. “No. I’m not injured or ill or anything, I just… don’t want to do that. You guys should though. You definitely should. I’m just…”

Steve takes another step forward and Clint’s eyes immediately fix on him. “You don’t want to go to bed with us?” Steve speaks quietly, trying to find out where the problem lies. “Any reason for that? You haven’t exactly seemed against the idea before now, so help me out here.”

“I haven’t-” and Clint actually bites his lip at that, something he only does when he’s in severe pain or upset enough that he doesn’t realise or care how obvious his distress is to those around him. It’s something Steve has only ever seen him do when one of them is injured or when Clint has had to admit that he can’t make an important shot. “I don’t want to have sex with you guys. I don’t want to have sex with anyone. I know I should have told you before, I _know_ that, but I guess I just wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

“Do you want to wait?” Bruce asks from somewhere behind Steve. “Do you want us to take things more slowly?”

“No, doc.” Clint smiles at him and it looks genuine but also kind of like he’s about to throw up. “That’s not going to- I’m never going to want it. I never _do_ want it. So you should just… you should just go on without me. I’m going to. I’m going to head to my room for a while and maybe we can talk after. I’d… I’d like it if we could talk after.”

He makes for the stairs and Steve almost moves to intercept him but thinks better of it when he sees the look in Clint’s eyes. “Clint, we’re not doing anything without you.”

Clint laughs darkly. “Well, you’re going to have to, Cap, because I’m not doing that anymore. I _won’t_.”

After he’s left they all stand in stunned silence for a moment before Tony says, “Well, that’s… really not how I imagined this going.”

Steve turns around to see if anyone has more of a clue about what just happened than he does and sees Natasha quietly slipping away to follow Clint. That’s probably for the best. It just leaves the four of them and Steve can see his confusion mirrored on Tony and Bruce’s faces, but Thor is frowning like he’s just realised something. “Thor? You look like you might have some insight into this.”

Thor looks up. “I was not aware that Clint was of that ilk: on Asgard, men such as he are far more forthcoming and there is none of this uncertainty. Though it does make sense: he is always most particular about where he allows himself to be touched, even during kisses, and his own hands never wander outside those boundaries.”

“Ilk?” Tony says at the same time as Bruce says, “Yeah, I noticed that too. I just assumed he had scars or maybe some issues resulting from trauma or something similar, but you’re right: that does make sense of a lot of things. Huh.”

Steve finds himself thinking of a moment from a few days ago. Clint sitting in his lap on the couch and the two of them kissing, slow kisses that felt more playful than anything else, but Steve had swept his hands up Clint’s thighs to his butt, intending to haul him in a little closer and deepen the kiss. He remembers how Clint had immediately pulled away with a shaky laugh, moving Steve’s hands back to his knees and making a joke about things getting a little fresh for a girl like him. They had kept kissing and the mood had stayed playful but Clint hadn’t let go of Steve’s hands after that.

“Damn,” Steve says.

By mutual agreement they all move to the couches, the mood thoughtful and a little subdued. Tony throws himself down on the nearest couch and lets out a dramatic sigh. “Okay. Guys? Am I really going to have to be the one who says it? Really? Okay, no one judge me because I know we’re all thinking the same thing right now.” He looks around at them all with wide tragic eyes. “What a _waste_.”

“Tony,” Bruce scolds without heat.

“No, seriously, we’re all thinking it. That ass, those arms, that laser-focus intensity – you’re not telling me that you never thought about how he’d be dynamite in the sack.”

Bruce presses his thumb and index finger into the corner of his eyes and sighs deeply but doesn’t deny it. Thor makes a rueful face and stays quiet too.

“Don’t let Clint – or Natasha for God’s sake – hear you talk like that,” Steve tells him. “That isn’t helpful right now.”

Tony flaps a hand around as if he’s batting Steve’s words to the side. “I won’t. Are you serious? Please. Though, you know, it might not be the worst idea in the world. Defuse some of that tension at least. You all saw Clint’s face, right? He isn't expecting us to take this well.”

“Which is exactly why he hasn’t mentioned it before now.” Bruce takes his glasses out of his pocket, seemingly just to give his hands something to do. “He’s expecting us to shut him out after this.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Steve says firmly. “I don’t… I’m not going to pretend that I understand this, not entirely, but whatever’s wrong with Clint is-”

“Whoa, hey now,” Tony jumps in, deadly serious like he almost never is. “There’s nothing _wrong_ with him, Steve, that’s not what this is about.”

“Do you not have this on Earth?” Thor has the same wounded expression he always gets when he’s trying not to judge his teammates for their planet’s backwards ways. Everyone hates being the cause of that expression. “It is common enough on my world and there is no shame in it. Nothing is thought to be absent or defective in a person for feeling such a way.”

“This isn’t about there being something _wrong_ with him,” Tony repeats like he doesn’t think Steve’s got it yet.

“Well, actually…” Bruce says.

Tony turns betrayed eyes on him. “ _Bruce_.”

“No, I didn’t mean.” Bruce holds up a hand to stave off Tony’s inevitable return to the dramatic. “I didn’t mean that. If Clint’s asexual then, yes, of course that’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with him, but we don’t know that’s what this is. We can’t assume. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here but maybe… maybe something happened to him. We don’t know. You know the kinds of missions S.H.I.E.L.D. used to send him and Natasha on. Maybe this isn’t a sexual orientation situation so much as it’s a result of trauma.”

That doesn’t seem to have occurred to Tony and he tilts his head to the side and hums as he considers it.

Steve waits a moment and then says, “What’s asexual?”

“Here.” Tony grabs one of the tablets that always litter the coffee table and tosses it to Steve. “I think this is where you and Wikipedia need to have a nice long meaningful conversation. You can join us when you’re done.”

Steve shoots him a look but turns on the tablet and does as he’s told. Sometimes it’s just easier this way when he needs to catch up in a hurry: Bruce and Tony’s explanations tend to be lengthy and confusing and Thor’s tend to be epic and worse. The only ones he can count on to just give him the facts in a clear and concise manner are Natasha and Clint and he always misses them when they aren’t around for conversations like this.

“You do have a point,” Tony is telling Bruce as Steve starts to read. “We need more information before we know what we’re dealing with here. Orientation, psychology, trauma… medical? Do you think medical is a possibility? Thor, feel free to weigh in on this anytime, buddy.”

Steve tunes them out with the ease of long practise. They’re still talking by the time he finishes the main Wikipedia article and several others it links to that look like they might be helpful. He has a better idea of what they are talking about now, but it doesn’t actually tell him anything about Clint. He figures he’s going to have to go straight to the source for that.

He’s sorely tempted to ask Bruce to sit in on this. Bruce is the closest thing they have to a medical perspective right now, which might turn out to be useful, but, more than that, Bruce has a way of navigating his way through awkward conversations that always makes Steve wonder how he manages to avoid all the landmines that Steve can never seem to help stepping on. He’s pretty sure this conversation is going to turn out to be one of those that are more landmine than solid ground.

But in the end, he goes on his own. He and Clint have always been able to speak the same language and he has to believe that this situation isn’t going to change that.

Of course, Natasha is there when Steve enters Clint’s suite. The two of them are curled up on opposite ends of the couch in his living room and tension crackles thick in the air between them. It probably shouldn’t make Steve feel better that Natasha is clearly as thrown by this as the rest of them, but it does. If Clint has managed to keep this from Natasha, of all people, it means this isn’t just a matter of the rest of them being unobservant. Clint has been actively hiding this and doing a damn good job of it. Maybe for a long time now.

Clint smiles up at Steve but it isn’t one of his better lies. He looks edgy and resigned in a way that makes Steve’s heart hurt, but Clint lifts his chin and meets Steve’s eyes squarely as he gestures him to sit down on the loveseat next to the couch.

“I’m sorry I messed up your orgy,” Clint says without inflection, like he’s been rehearsing the words in his head all the time he’s been up here.

“That’s… okay. You don’t have to be sorry about any of this.”

“I’m not sorry about being the way I am.” There’s a warning in Clint’s eyes but Steve doesn’t react to it. “I’m not going to apologise for that. But. Not telling you guys was shitty of me and I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m sorry too,” Steve says, thinking of that awful laugh as Clint had pulled Steve’s hands away from his body. “But I understand why you didn’t.”

Natasha shifts on the opposite end of the couch, tucking her knees up beneath the hem of her oversized sweater, and Clint’s eyes flick towards her for a long moment before returning to Steve. “You’ve got questions,” he says. “Go ahead.”

“All right.” Steve sits forward and looks at Clint, trying to project a calm he doesn’t feel. “I’ve been on Wikipedia and the others explained a few things to me, but I think the best expert on you is always going to be you. I kind of need to know what the situation is here, Clint.”

“I know,” Clint’s voice is light and unconcerned and fake as Hell. “I know this part, I’ve been here before. You’ve got questions so you’d better just ask them.”

“The article I read was on being asexual – is that what you call yourself? An asexual?”

Clint makes a strange shrugging gesture like he’s trying on the word for size. “I guess? I never really put a name to it but, yeah, sure. That about covers it.”

“And it’s…” Steve reaches for the correct terminology; people are more sensitive about words today and he’s trying to be careful, even though he’s normally far more likely to offend Clint by being careful with him than with whatever he might actually say. “It’s a _preference_. It’s about what you don’t want.”

“I’m not impotent, Steve,” Clint says flatly, like it’s something he’s said dozens of times before and he’s just bored with it all by this point. “I still have all my junk and it all works fine, I just don’t want to use it. I don’t _like_ using it.”

“Okay, good, that’s… good.” Steve looks to Natasha for help but she’s completely focussed on Clint with an unreadable expression on her face. Steve wishes for a moment that he’d asked one of the others to come with him for this, if only so he didn’t have to do all the talking.

“I even jerk off,” Clint says in that same disinterested tone. “Not often, and it doesn’t really do much for me except release tension, but I do it. Same as any other bodily function.”

“Okay, that’s…”

“And I wasn’t touched as a kid. I mean, yeah, my dad used to beat the shit out of me and my brother, but no one ever gave me the bad touch and fucked me up about sex in my formative years. Not my parents, not at the orphanage, not in foster care, not even a little bit.”

Steve licks his lips, feeling queasy. “Now, why do I get the feeling that you’ve got this whole conversation worked out before I even got here?”

Clint shrugs. “I told you: I’ve been here before. I’ve had this conversation more than once.”

“Well, you haven’t had it with _me_ so how about you stop telling me what you think I’m going to say and let me take a shot at it myself,” Steve keeps his voice level but lets Clint see how serious he is.

Clint shrugs again but looks slightly chastened this time. “Okay.”

Of course, now Steve doesn’t have a clue what he’s going to say. “So nothing happened to you growing up?”

“Nothing to do with this.”

“And after that?” Steve tries to tread carefully. If there are landmines, this is where they will be. “On a mission maybe? Nothing… did something maybe happen to you that made you feel like this?”

Whatever ground he’d gained immediately falls away and Clint looks bored and resentful again. “No. Nothing like that.”

“Belgrade,” Natasha says, speaking for the first time and startling Steve. Steve doesn’t know what that sharp note in her voice means but Clint clearly does because he looks absolutely furious when he whips his head around to glare at her. Clint’s face usually looks stern but he’s the most level-headed out of all of them and Steve can count on the fingers of one hand all the times he’s seen him this angry.

“Fuck you, Natasha. _No_. That’s got nothing to do with this.”

“What happened in Belgrade?” Steve forces himself to ask.

“I was tortured.” Clint doesn’t look away from the silent conversation he and Natasha are having with just their narrowed eyes.

“You mean raped,” the word catches in Steve's throat, hurts coming up.

“As a part of torture,” Clint says dismissively. He glances at Steve and whatever he sees on Steve’s face makes his eyes blink wide. “Hey.” He looks sad now but it’s on Steve’s behalf and not his own and that makes Steve feel even worse. “Cap, come on. It was just torture. Just another thing guys like that do when they get bored of pulling out your fingernails. You know how it is.”

“That doesn’t make it nothing. There’s no point in us having this conversation if you’re going to lie to me.”

Clint makes a face that’s equal parts frustration and shame. “I wasn’t _lying_ ,” he says. “It was nothing – it has nothing to do with this. It was just torture. Doesn’t mean anything more than that. And, you know what, yeah, it sucked, but it was a Hell of a lot less traumatic than… than some of the other stuff they did.” He tails off and rubs absently at his breastbone for a second, seemingly unaware that he’s doing it, and Steve wonders if what he’s thinking about even left a scar. Most of the worst things in life don’t.

“Clint,” he says quietly when Clint’s eyes stay distant for a little too long and Clint immediately snaps back into the room and tucks his hands beneath his thighs.

“Belgrade was shitty,” Clint says eventually, “but it didn’t change anything. I get that you want a reason, something to point to that’ll make it all make sense to you, but it doesn’t work like that. This is just how I am. I tried not to be – I tried for years to be like everyone else, to want it, but I don’t. I never have done. And I’m through pretending.”

“So you’ve… you’ve been in relationships before?”

“Yes, he has,” Natasha cuts in and something has changed, something unsaid has been communicated between her and Clint because she might be all the way on the opposite end of the couch but she’s entirely on his side now. “Several in the time I’ve known him,” Natasha glances at Clint as if to check that this is all right for her to say, “and others before then, I think. Not really anyone in the last couple of years though.”

Clint nods, looking at Natasha again and the last of the anger seems to bleed out of him at her words. “I like being in relationships. I need- I like being close like that. The emotional side. I just don’t want to have sex with them and that doesn’t tend to go down well.”

“So you’d tell them?”

“Yeah. Well. Kind of?” Clint makes an impatient seesawing gesture with both hands that Steve doesn’t really know how to interpret. “Not so much when I was younger and trying to be something I’m not, but later, yeah, I’d tell people right away. Get it over with. They’d sometimes say they were okay with it and things would be fine for a while, but no one’s ever as okay with it as they say they are. I’d- we’d try for a while, but it never seemed to make much difference in the end.”

Something in Clint’s expression makes Steve frown. “You’d… Are you saying you slept with them?”

“Of course.”

“And they were okay with that?” The thought of it makes Steve feel queasy all over again. “Sleeping with you while knowing you didn’t want to?”

Clint grins at that, a sharp movement like a knife snapping open. “Yeah, people usually are.”

“Clint-”

“Look, no one ever forced me into anything,” Clint talks over him, “so you can seriously stop looking at me like that any time now. It was always my choice. I just figured, you know, it wasn’t really fair – me being with them and them wanting that. It wasn’t fair for me to get what I wanted and not give them anything in return.”

“Jesus, Clint.” Steve finds himself nearly as horrified by Clint’s offhand tone as by what he’s actually saying. “That shouldn’t… It shouldn’t work like that. How can you say you weren’t giving them anything? Being with you is not _nothing_ , okay?”

“But it’s not enough.” Clint shrugs and switches his attention to his own knees with a very deliberate casualness. Pokes at a worn spot on his jeans that is starting to tear around the edges. “Which is fine. I get it – sex is important to most people. I get that.”

Steve looks at Clint for a long time. Watches him wind a loose thread around his finger and pull until it breaks. “You know none of us want that from you, right?” he says carefully. “I mean, we _did_ , but only when we thought you wanted it too. No one wants anything from you that you don’t want to give.”

“I know you don’t.” Clint doesn’t look at him but the corner of his mouth curls up slightly. “And you wouldn’t get it even if you did. I told you – I’m done with that. No more pretending.”

Steve is very aware of Natasha watching him, waiting to see what he’s going to do. He lets the silence sit for a moment and then says, “So what _do_ you like? Kissing is okay, I take it?”

Clint’s head snaps up and he blinks a few times before frowning. “Uh, yeah? Kissing is good. But, Cap, I don’t-”

“Is it always good?” Steve interrupts him, doesn’t give him time to let that uncertainty build.

“Uh.” Clint still looks a little dazed but he’s responding to the questions and thinking about it. Falling in line automatically. “Sometimes? Sometimes I don’t want anyone’s tongue in my mouth. Usually I don’t. Sometimes it’s okay, but I like it best when it’s calm. When it’s just kissing and I don’t have to worry about what it’s leading towards.”

“Okay.” Steve nods. “So we should ask? If tongues are okay we should ask?”

Clint twitches his shoulders in something that’s not quite a shrug, starting to look cornered. “Maybe? Steve, I really don’t think this is-”

“Or we could just follow your lead,” Natasha suggests, backing Steve’s play like she always does when he needs her. “Say, if you kiss like that then it means it’s okay for us to do the same. And you’ll stop things if it suddenly stops being okay at any time, right? You’ll tell us to stop?”

Clint’s brow creases so Steve presses him. “Can we trust you to do that, Clint?”

“Yeah,” Clint says after a long pause where he gives Steve a hard and searching look. “Yeah, Cap, I can do that.”

“Okay, good. So. Nudity…?” Clint actually flinches at that and Steve nods. “Nudity isn’t okay.”

“No, well, it’s.” Clint makes a face. “I can do it, but-”

“This isn’t about what you can do,” Natasha scolds him. “I’ve seen you take out your own appendix and shoot with a broken arm – I know what you can _do_. This is about what you like.”

Steve has already heard several variations on the story of Clint shooting with a broken arm, but the appendix one is new to him. He makes a mental note to ask about it later. “Is it just you being naked that you’re uncomfortable with or is it other people being naked too? You seem okay with Bruce and with Thor in the mornings.”

“No, other people naked is fine.” Clint smirks. “I’m used to that – barracks, you know? It doesn’t really do anything for me that it’s supposed to, but I don’t mind it. But when it’s me I don’t – I prefer to wear clothes. Pretty much all the time.”

Natasha actually laughs at that, startling Steve with the sharp bark they only hear when something really tickles her. “Oh, you are going to _break their hearts_ ,” she shakes her head. “Seriously. You’re a cruel man, Clint Barton.”

“You’ll have to break it to them gently,” Clint says, completely deadpan but with an amused glint in his eye. “Tell them they’ll just have to settle for you and Steve instead of my godlike beauty. I know it’s going to be tough for them so make sure you have some Kleenex close to hand in case they cry.”

“I’ll draw them a sketch of what I can remember from Marrakesh,” Natasha tells him solemnly. “They can put it up on the refrigerator to look at when the pain gets too much.”

“Well, that’s not going to be too disturbing to come face to face with when I’m hunting for leftovers in the middle of the night.” The gentle teasing seems to settle something in Clint. He and Natasha are doing that silent communication thing with their eyes again but, this time, it isn’t hard to see what they’re saying to one another. Clint catches Steve watching and gives him a small crooked smile. “We done here, Steve? I think I’ve had about as much talking about myself as I can take for one day.”

He is looking a little frayed around the edges but, beneath that, there’s a familiar calm that has been missing ever since Steve made the suggestion that the six of them head up to Tony’s suite. Steve is glad to see its return. “I think we should go join the others downstairs. They’re going to be getting antsy by now.”

For a second, he thinks Clint is going to protest, but he just sets his jaw and nods curtly. More Hawkeye than Clint in the gesture. “As long as they don’t want me to talk about it either.”

It’s pretty much guaranteed that they will, but Steve only says, “Leave that to me. I’ll fill them in on everything they need to know, if that’s all right with you.”

Clint just nods again, giving his permission. “Feel free to skip over how often I jerk off when you have that conversation.”

“But that was the best part,” Steve says, feigning confusion and feeling accomplished when it gets a snort out of Clint. 

“There is one more thing we need to work out first,” Natasha says, ignoring Clint’s quiet groan. “What do you want to be doing while we’re all having sex? Do you want to be in the same room as the rest of us?”

Clint blinks at the question and shakes his head, but it doesn’t look like he’s disagreeing. “No one’s going to want that. Me hanging around like a creep.”

“I think they will,” Steve says evenly. “I know I do and Natasha does, so that’s forty per cent of the group already.”

Clint looks at him. “They’re not going to want that.”

“Don’t you worry about what they want right now. What do _you_ want? Do you want to be in there with us?”

There’s a long moment where Steve isn’t sure Clint is going to answer, but then he shrugs and says, “Yeah,” on a long exhale, looking down at his knees. “I don’t have to watch or anything, but maybe I could be there for the end bit at least. I… I always liked that part. Where you just lie there after and it’s all calm and quiet and close. That was always the part of sex I liked.”

“Then we’ll talk to the others and see what they say.” Steve reaches out and squeezes Clint’s hand, relieved when Clint immediately squeezes back. “But I think you know that they’re going to want you to be a part of this in whatever way you’re comfortable with. Clint, just think for a second about who’s on your team. I’m sure you’re not going to be the only one of us who needs things done a little different.”

He can see that Clint doesn’t really understand what he means, but Natasha nods and there’s quiet but real approval in her eyes. She uncurls herself from the couch and stands in front of them. “Come on. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can stop being the centre of attention.”

Clint brightens at that and rolls onto his feet, visibly readying himself for battle until Natasha bumps her shoulder against his and shoots him an amused look. Clint looks sheepish for a second before he smirks and bumps her back.

When Clint looks expectantly at Steve, Steve smiles and gets to his feet. He still isn’t sure what he’s going to say to the others or how this is all going to work, but it doesn’t matter really. His team can do this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to only be two chapters, but it's decided it wants to be three instead. Oops?

Despite everyone’s best intentions, things are awkward between the six of them after that. Steve takes Tony, Bruce and Thor to one side that first evening and gives them a slightly-edited recap of his conversation with Clint and that helps to settle a few fears, but it doesn’t actually translate into things going smoothly.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the problem lies. None of them are really acting any different individually, but there is a kind of unfocused tension that descends as soon as three or more of them are in a room together. Clint is perhaps a little quieter than usual, but he isn’t avoiding anyone, even if he does occasionally drift into that flat sniper’s stare that they haven’t seen since their early days as a team. He’s clearly wondering why the five of them haven’t headed up to Tony’s suite yet and Steve doesn’t know what he would tell him if he asked. He doesn’t know how to make this right.

The tension lasts for the best part of three days. Or, more accurately, it lasts until Natasha gets sick of waiting for the situation to resolve itself and decides to take matters into her own hands.

The first Steve knows about it is when he walks into the common area for a snack and is immediately assaulted by a noise that sounds like a rusty engine struggling to turn over. It turns out to be Clint, slumped against the kitchen counter and laughing harder than Steve has ever seen him – a full body laugh that bears little resemblance to his usual dry chuckle or the cackles that Tony can sometimes coax out of him towards the end of a long night. Clint is bright red and breathless and Steve finds himself smiling even before he knows what the joke is.

Natasha is standing off to the side with her arms crossed over her chest and looking very pleased with herself, even more so once Clint stops laughing long enough to shake his head and say, “I suppose I should be grateful you’ve given me boxers.”

It’s only then that Steve spots the drawing pinned to the refrigerator. “Oh my God, I thought you were joking.”

“I never joke,” Natasha says sternly and then immediately proves the lie of that with a wicked grin.

Natasha is a woman of many hidden talents, but drawing is clearly not among them. Steve is mildly horrified by her poor grasp of anatomy. It isn’t clear what Clint is supposed to be doing in the drawing (changing a light bulb possibly) but he has his bow in one hand and is posed in a way that seems to require him flexing his improbable muscles and sticking his butt out while grinning in a disturbingly manic fashion.

It’s the grin that sets Steve off laughing so hard that he almost misses Clint tell Natasha, “You and I remember Marrakesh very differently.”

After that, Steve gets to stand next to Natasha as they watch each of the others discover her artwork for themselves. Thor’s delighted grin and Bruce’s wide-eyed disbelief that turns into helpless snorting laughter when Clint attempts to recreate the pose are both well worth the price of admission, though Tony’s double take on the way to the coffee machine is Steve’s personal favourite. Tony squints at the drawing and then at Clint with a sceptical expression. “You don’t really have abs like that do you, Barton?”

Clint smirks and leans back against the counter in a way that almost, but not quite, makes his shirt ride up. “You’ll never know, Stark.”

“You fucking tease,” Tony says with entirely too much leering approval and Steve frowns, ready to tell him to cool it, but Clint just smirks harder and shimmies his hips until Tony laughs and throws a packet of that disgusting powdered non-milk at him. Steve catches Natasha’s eye and decides that she deserves to look as smug as she likes.

Of course, Tony wouldn’t be Tony if he didn’t find a way to escalate ridiculous situations and make himself the centre of attention, so no one is surprised when he demands that Natasha draw him next. By dinner, the picture of Clint is joined by one of Tony kissing a Herculean bicep while he either winks at his audience or has a minor stroke. It’s hard to be sure. Natasha seems to be on a roll now and the refrigerator door quickly fills up with drawings of Thor, Bruce, and finally Steve, all in their underwear and striking a variety of cheesecake poses. Steve has had his likeness captured many times since he became Captain America, but nothing quite like this. He looks at his picture on the refrigerator and can’t decide whether it’s the worst drawing he’s ever seen of himself or the best. He thinks it might somehow be both.

It doesn’t seem fair that Natasha gets left out of this, but Steve’s offer to draw her is immediately and loudly vetoed on the grounds that pinups aren’t funny when they’re done by people who can actually draw. In the end, it’s Thor who puts pencil to paper and Steve wants to protest because the finished product is _at least_ as good as anything he could have done and only funny in how completely Thor seems to have missed the point of what has been happening here. Natasha is posed standing straight on with one hand on her hip and her head held high; she’s wearing nothing but a pair of panties, her Widow’s bracelets and an intricate metallic headdress that Steve has never seen before. She looks more like a Valkyrie than a pinup.

“One of these things is not like the others,” Tony singsongs when Thor’s drawing takes its place on the refrigerator. “It does kind of make you want to see Cap and Roll of Thunder go head to head on Draw Something though, doesn’t it?”

Natasha makes a copy to hang in her suite and Steve just hopes that the security in the Tower is as good as Tony seems to think it is. He can’t imagine that anyone outside of the six of them would be interested in the pictures of him and the other guys, but Natasha has by far the strangest and most persistent fans and he could easily see it ending up on the internet or in the hands of some private collector.

Those concerns aside, things settle down once their refrigerator is covered in Thor and Natasha’s artwork. It’s hard to hold onto any lingering tension when you’re confronted with each other’s grimacing faces every time you go to get milk. It isn’t quite the same as before though, at least not until Tony reaches up to absently kiss Steve one morning and just like that it’s as if things never stopped. The six of them still don’t spend a lot of time in the same place, but they’re starting to collect in groups again and things are definitely heading in the right direction.

Of course, that’s when Tony gets called away on Stark Industries business.

“To Manila,” Tony protests to anyone within his own personal definition of earshot. “ _Manila_. It’s like these people have never heard of video conferencing. I could run Stark Industries entirely from my lab if I weren’t surrounded by luddites who insist on me _going_ places and _seeing_ things _in person_. Complete waste of time.”

“If you ran Stark Industries from your lab you’d have nowhere to hide when you wanted to avoid running Stark Industries,” Steve points out. Tony just makes a rude face and no one says anything about how Pepper could probably have found a way around this.

Tony’s going to be gone for at least two weeks and his wisecracks ring a little hollow when he tells them all to be good and not have too much fun without him. There’s an awkward pause as everyone waits for someone else to be the one to respond to that before Thor finally just pulls Tony into a kiss and says, “We will wait for your return.”

Thor is the next to leave. There’s business on Asgard that he’s put off for too long as it is and, with Tony gone, now seems to be as good a time as any to deal with it. He promises to return within the fortnight and kisses them all like he’s going to be counting down the hours. After a kiss like that, he’s not the only one.

Four seems like an incomplete number after all this time. Steve has gotten so used to the six of them butting heads and sharing space that the Tower feels empty with the loss of its two loudest personalities. Bruce disappears into his lab and there is always something at SHIELD to keep the rest of them busy, but it’s painfully clear that they’re all just killing time until they are six again.

On the second day, Clint comes to Steve with his cell phone in his hand and an unreadable expression on his face. “Tony says we should all sleep in his giant bed while he’s not here.”

He holds the phone up for Steve to see, as if Steve might not believe him otherwise. Steve slowly puts down the mission proposal he’s been looking over and gives Clint his full attention. “Oh yeah?”

Clint waggles the phone at him, huffing when Steve doesn’t even spare it a glance. “That’s what he said. Well, that and some other stuff about being our landlord, but that’s gotten kind of old now so I didn’t think it needed passing on.”

Steve nods. “He can do better.”

“Yeah. So. You want to?”

“Do you?” There’s still something in Clint’s expression that Steve can’t pin down, but he doesn’t seem uncomfortable with the idea. Tony obviously sent Clint the text privately instead of through the obnoxious group messaging system so it would be his decision whether to bring it up with the rest of them or not. The fact that Clint’s even mentioning it seems like a good sign.

“Sure,” Clint says, voice a little too easy but nothing that Steve is going to call him on. “Fair warning though: Natasha kicks and Banner snores.”

It turns out that Clint is joking about Natasha but not about Bruce. It’s not an unpleasant snore; soft and low and with a slight whistle on the exhale that reminds Steve of Dernier and falling asleep surrounded by an entirely different team seventy years ago. The pain that follows that thought is less sharp-edged than he would have once thought possible and he lies awake most of the night not sure how to feel about that.

That entire first night is a little strained, but the worst moment by far is when all four of them are gathered around Tony’s dauntingly huge bed in their sleep clothes and it suddenly hits Steve that he still wakes up choking at least once a week. And now his team is going to see that. They’re going to know that about him. He stares at the bed with its soft pillows and turned down sheets and suddenly this doesn’t seem like something he can do.

He’s opening his mouth without knowing what he’s going to say, but Bruce beats him to it; expression mild but his voice soft and bitter like he’s being forced to tell an old joke that he stopped finding funny a long time ago. “So this is probably the part where I apologise in advance for waking you all up at some point during the night. Like I said before, I’m not really the soundest sleeper and my dreams can get kind of… loud.”

Some of Steve’s alarm must show at that because Bruce holds his hands up. “Not- don’t worry, not _Other Guy_ loud. Not that. Just the regular screaming terror variety.”

“Oh,” Steve says dumbly. “Okay. That’s… that’s okay. My dreams can get kind of loud too.”

Bruce smiles at him, grateful and not even a little bit surprised and after that it’s easier for Steve to make himself climb into bed and settle down.

It gets better after that first night as the four of them quickly fall into a routine and learn each other’s rhythms. Natasha sleeps on her stomach and makes soft sighing noises, outstretched hands opening and closing in her sleep unless she’s pressed up against someone, usually Clint, who sleeps on her far side as still and silent as stone. Both of them wake up instantly at the slightest sound and settle down again just as quickly once they’ve established that there’s no threat. If they have nightmares they have them in silence, never giving any sign of whatever battles they may be fighting inside their own heads.

Steve sleeps between Natasha and Bruce and usually wakes to find himself curled around one or the other of them. He’s a big guy now, by all except Asgardian standards, and hasn’t felt truly cold since he woke up in this century, but his body seems to forget that when he sleeps and instinctively seeks out the nearest heat source like it’s the only thing that’s going to get him through the winter. He doesn’t need as much sleep as the others do and is always the first out of bed in the morning, but sometimes he likes to lay awake with his eyes closed and listen to them breathe.

That’s all he had been meaning to do when he realises that at some point Natasha and Clint have started talking, curled into each other and voices low and soft as breath, quiet enough that it’s only his enhanced hearing that means he can make out words at all. He doesn’t need a clock to know it’s somewhere around three in the morning, the room inky black behind his eyelids and Bruce sleeping soundly after his regularly scheduled nightmare has run its course.

“I knew you never wanted me,” Natasha is saying. “I could tell that and I thought… I thought you must just be gay. I never thought anything else. Never questioned it.”

“I didn’t want you to question it. I didn’t want you to think about it at all.”

“But I should have. That’s what I do – what we do. We don’t just accept the easiest answer and move on. It was careless of me. You made me careless.”

Clint sighs. “Or you trusted me enough to know it didn’t matter. Maybe that.”

“Maybe that.”

“Mmm.”

There’s a pause long enough that Steve thinks they might have fallen back to sleep and then Natasha speaks again, her voice even softer than before and something in it that he’s never heard before. “But then you said. When we were all coming up here and you said you didn’t want to. I thought it had to have been something recent. Because I’d have noticed if you’d been like this for a long time, people can’t hide things from me. So I thought it had to have been Loki.”

He hears Clint’s indrawn breath. “Natasha-”

“And it made all kinds of sense,” she continues. “You know what he- what he said he was going to make you do to me. It’s in him to do that. He enjoys it. So I thought it had to have been that. That this was something else he’d done to you and I hadn’t even noticed.”

“He didn’t,” Clint whispers. “Natasha, he didn’t even touch me. Not like that.”

“Okay.”

“He didn’t want that from me. I wasn’t a person to him, I wasn’t… I wasn’t even _alive_ to him, not really. I was just a tool. A weapon. It would have been like him sticking his dick in a gun.”

Steve hears Natasha laugh softly at that, like Clint must have meant her to. “Well, you know some people are into that.”

“Yeah, I remember. Vividly.”

“Poor baby.”

Clint makes a grumbling noise and they both move, skin against sheets and limbs rearranging as they settle down again. Steve hears one of them press their lips against the other’s skin, thinks it was probably Natasha by the way her voice is slightly muffled when she says, “Don’t worry, Barton. You’ll always be a tool to me too.”

They lapse into soft breath and Steve finds himself starting to drift off when he hears Clint say softly, “Maybe it was Loki.”

He can practically hear the way Natasha goes absolutely rigid at that, can’t keep his own body from clenching up tight, but Clint keeps talking, heading that thought off before it can fully form. “Not like that. He didn’t do that. But he did use my body to do things I didn’t want. Things he wanted from me. It was all about what he wanted and I didn’t matter and it… Maybe it hit a little too close to home. Meant that I couldn’t make myself do that anymore. Just be a useful body for what someone else wants.”

“It wouldn’t be like that.”

“I know that.”

“Clint, we all… you wouldn’t be just a body to us. _Never_.”

“I know that.”

“Then what?”

Clint makes a frustrated sound. “I know all of that. But it… It doesn’t matter how much someone… It doesn’t matter what they feel. As soon as they touch me like that I can’t feel it anymore. It’s gone. So they’re still there, feeling something and thinking they’re showing me that, but all I’m feeling is dirty and alone because they’re touching me in a way I don’t want and they can’t even see what it’s doing to me.”

Natasha’s breath shudders. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know it was like that for you.”

A sigh and the sound of skin across fabric, a soothing stroke down the length of a back. “It isn’t always. Sometimes it’s just… boring. Like going to the dentist. You want to know the funny thing? It’s worse when it’s someone I like. Harder to pretend.”

There’s a pause and Steve thinks about coughing, about pretending to turn over in his sleep and breaking the spell that has fallen over the bed. His hands are still curled into loose fists and there’s a dull ache in his chest that feels a lot like guilt. He should have said something, let them know he was awake as soon as he realised what it was they were talking about. What kind of man was he to just lie there in the dark listening to secrets not meant for him?

He’s still telling himself to move when Natasha speaks. “You aren’t going to do that though, are you?”

Steve freezes, thinking she’s talking to him, and then Clint answers. “With you guys? Said I wouldn’t. Meant it.”

“You thought about it though,” her voice is soft but very sure. “Pretending for us. You thought about it.”

“Not for long.” The words are a definite end to the conversation, half mumbled and punctuated by a yawn that might even be genuine.

There is only silence after that and within a few minutes their breathing patterns even out into the rhythms of sleep. Steve lies still and stares at the ceiling. He tells himself that he won’t be able to sleep again that night, but the next time he opens his eyes there is pale light filtering through the floor to ceiling windows and he and Bruce are alone in the bed.

Clint and Natasha both have a tendency to disappear for days at a time without saying goodbye, but this time it feels a little persona that Steve has to find out from Agent Hill that they’ve been called away for a mission. They could have at least left a note. Don’t people leave notes anymore?

Agent Hill doesn’t say as much and Steve knows better than to ask, but he’s pretty sure that the mission is the same one he’d looked over a few days earlier. It’s a simple extraction that shouldn’t take more than seventy two hours from start to finish and nothing that should present a problem to agents of Clint and Natasha’s calibre. That doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it though.

Bruce isn’t exactly happy about it either when Steve wanders down to his lab to share the news. It’s the first time Steve has been there since the grand tour Tony insisted on giving him when he first moved into the Tower, eager to show off his new toys and desperate for Steve to tell him what he wanted Tony to build or make or design for him. It’s endearing in retrospect, now that he knows Tony and what he was trying to say beneath all the bluster, but at the time it had been too much when all Steve had wanted was a place to lay his head down.

Bruce’s lab is smaller than Tony’s and with fewer personal touches, but Bruce somehow makes it seem homey and unthreatening just by standing in it so Steve tries not to look too closely at all the steel instruments and different coloured vials of liquid.

“Do you think it was something we said?” There’s a wry twist to Bruce’s mouth as he does something with a microscope and pipettes of a clear milky liquid.

Steve sits in the chair Bruce had indicated and folds his big hands in his lap. There are a lot of things made out of glass in here. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying out this new cologne. Maybe it’s not working for me.”

“Ah. Mystery solved.”

“You’re still sticking around though.” It comes out a little more like a question than Steve had intended and he frowns, irritated at himself.

“Well, I have allergies.” Bruce politely pretends not to notice. “And a lot of work to do.”

“Should I get out of your hair?”

The look Bruce shoots him over his glasses is fond and just a little disapproving and something about that combination sends a sharp little thrill through Steve that he doesn’t even try to hide. He’s rewarded with a light flush and that look turning speculative before Bruce coughs and redirects his attention to the microscope. “You’re not in my hair, but don’t feel like you have to stay. It can’t be very interesting for you.”

“What are you working on?”

That gets a short laugh. “What am I working on… Well, let’s say I’m developing a lightweight flexible material to act as an impermeable barrier against gamma radiation without breaking or degrading under stress conditions.”

It takes Steve a moment. “So you’re making condoms.”

Bruce’s eyebrows go up and Steve tries to ignore his momentary flicker of annoyance. “Yeah. Tony was the one who thought of it. He brought it up, um, a while back.”

“That must have been one Hell of a conversation.”

“Yeah,” Bruce draws the word out. “All of my bodily fluids are basically toxic so I… I can’t really get close to people. Like that. Or I didn’t think I could until Tony convinced me otherwise. He was… disturbingly well-read on the subject.”

That wasn’t hard to picture. “How are you getting on?”

Bruce makes a noncommittal gesture. “Well, we’re still some ways from developing a prototype, but it’s looking promising. It’s really not something you want to rush though. The results could be… bad.”

Steve mulls that over, thinking back to his conversation with Clint and saying that all of them would need different things. This isn’t exactly what he’d had in mind, but he can’t say it comes as too much of a surprise either. “Me and Thor should be okay,” he says out loud. “Gamma radiation won’t have any effect on us.”

“Theoretically,” Bruce’s voice holds the grudging tone of a scientist forced to agree with a hypothesis he hasn’t verified for himself. “Thor, at least, I think it’s pretty safe to say won’t experience any adverse effects from coming into contact with gamma radiation. Or most other kinds of radiation. I’m less certain about your resistance levels, but you should be fine if the radiation stays at a low dosage.”

Steve can’t help but grin. “We’re not talking about a low dosage? Just what exactly are you planning on doing, doc?”

“Oh, well, that’s my other party trick,” Bruce says dryly. His fingers twitch against the microscope and it suddenly occurs to Steve what is in all those pipettes he has lined up on the workbench. He wonders if Tony helped with that part too.

“So what were you going to do that time?” Steve drags his eyes away. “Before Clint said no and we were all going up to Tony’s suite. Did you have a plan?”

“I was going to explain the situation and then see what everyone felt comfortable with.” Bruce shrugs, his shoulders a little too tight for how casual he’s trying to appear. “There’s lots I can do without putting anyone else at risk.”

And wasn’t that a nice thought. “Or you could have stuck with me and Thor. You still can, at least until you have this thing ready to go.”

Bruce looks a little overwhelmed for a second. “Well, the… Um. The effects may be cumulative. Radiation is tricky like that. Even if you seem perfectly fine after one exposure or two or ten, it doesn’t mean that damage isn’t occurring or that your body could sustain that level of resistance over a certain length of time and number of exposures. This is kind of an… unexamined field right now and it’s not something I’m prepared to gamble with.”

“So knowing my resistance levels would probably help with all of this?”

“Well, it couldn’t hurt.”

“Okay.” Steve stands up and strips off his jacket. “How do you want me?”

Helping Bruce in the lab over the following days turns out to mostly involve letting himself be stuck with needles and taking down numbers in between long periods of being ignored while Bruce mutters at glass slides. It’s a little disappointing. Steve doesn’t really have the temperament for lab work and there are many other demands on his time, but he makes a point of dropping in for a couple of hours as often as he can spare them, smiling at Bruce’s distracted greeting and occasionally setting aside his tablet to provide another pair of hands. During the day they circle around each other and at night they curl up in the middle of Tony’s huge bed and ignore the space around them.

Working towards a solid goal helps the next couple of days go faster than Steve had ever thought they would and he’s almost surprised when JARVIS announces that Agents Barton and Romanoff have returned and are in Agent Romanoff’s suite awaiting their presence.

Bruce is at a critical stage with something time-sensitive so he waves Steve off and Steve makes himself walk at a reasonable speed. He absolutely does not tap his foot as the elevator climbs to Natasha’s floor.

Natasha’s door is unlocked and he knows that he’s expected, but Steve still calls out a greeting as he walks in. He knows what it’s like to return home after a mission and how long it can take before everything around you stops registering as a potential threat.

“In here,” Clint’s voice rings out and Steve follows it to the bedroom. All of their suites have the same basic layout, but are furnished according to their own personal tastes and Natasha’s tastes seem to run towards bright colours and confusing art. There are two identical black duffle bags on the floor beside the couch and a new six inch glass statue of what might be a melting swan on the coffee table. The mission can’t have been too bad if Natasha has managed to pick up something new and inexplicable for her collection.

The bedroom door is open, but it’s only when he’s standing in the doorway that Steve can see Clint and Natasha and what he sees pulls him up short. They’re both on the bed, Natasha lying flat on her belly with Clint straddling her hips and leaning over her. Clint is dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, but Natasha looks like she’s naked and she’s moaning in a way that makes Steve’s mouth go dry.

Clint slants a grin over his shoulder. “Hey, Cap. Hear you’ve been holding down the fort.”

It takes Steve a couple of seconds longer than it really should to realise that Clint is giving Natasha a massage; there’s the scent of oil and lavender in the air and when he approaches the bed Steve can see that Natasha’s back and legs are shining. Clint must have started with her legs and worked his way up because now he’s rolling the heels of his palms from the base of her spine right up to her shoulders and pulling pleased sounds from her with every movement.

Steve sits on the bed besides them and strokes his fingers through Natasha’s hair; it’s clean and wet from the shower. “Hey. Everything go okay?”

“Yeah.” Clint looks like he’s fresh out of the shower too; skin flushed and still damp enough that his shirt clings to it in places. Steve can’t see any signs of injury on either of them. “No problems. Natasha’s just a little knotted up.”

Natasha cracks an eye open and smiles up at Steve. “Clint has magic hands,” she says, voice even huskier than usual. “I knew I kept him around for a reason.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Clint pushes his thumbs into the small of her back and then slowly drags them up the length of her spine as she shudders happily. “Just remember I work for tips.”

Steve sits quietly, stroking Natasha’s hair and watching as Clint takes her apart beneath his hands. He works slowly and methodically and with the same calm confidence he brings to most physical things; this is something he is good at and his face reflects quiet satisfaction in his own competence as well as in being able to do this for Natasha. There’s something compelling about the two of them like this, about the contrast of Clint’s tanned and battered hands against the pale cream of Natasha’s skin and the obvious familiarity he has with her body. Something that manages to be deeply intimate without being sexual.

Clint makes a quiet sound and then digs both thumbs into the muscle beneath Natasha’s shoulder blade, so hard that Steve winces but Natasha just groans deep in her throat and says, “ _There_.”

“I know.”

By the time Clint has finished up and it smoothing his palms down Natasha’s back, Bruce has joined them on the bed. He has a kiss for Clint and then he leans against Steve’s side and touches his fingertips to the curve of Natasha’s smile. “Agent Romanoff.”

“Doctor Banner,” she purrs.

“Yeah, okay, you’re done.” Clint moves off of Natasha, leaving her smiling and glistening and dressed in a pair of black panties that Steve hadn’t noticed at first. She stretches her arms above her head, toes pointed, and entire body one long line of contentment before she rolls onto her back and Steve immediately finds something absolutely fascinating to look at on the far side of the room. Her soft laugh brings him back and he looks down at her face, trying to ignore the heat he can feel rising to his cheeks. “You don’t play fair.”

“Playing fair is for losers, Rogers. You know that.” One eyebrow arches, cool and amused. “So how _do_ you want me?”

Bruce sets his chin on Steve’s shoulder and the fact that he is surrounded by assholes isn’t exactly news at this point. He looks across at Clint, who is flexing his hands and watching them a little apprehensively before he notices Steve’s attention and slaps on a smirk.

Natasha follows Steve’s look and her eyes narrow. “Okay, Barton, don’t think I didn’t notice you rubbing your shoulder on the ride back. Your turn.”

Clint shrugs agreeably.

“Do you…” Bruce raises his head from Steve’s shoulder. “Would you be okay with letting me do that?”

There’s no change in Clint’s expression and Natasha is watching both of them very closely as Bruce smiles self-deprecatingly. “I picked up some massage technique on the road. Even paid my way doing that for a while. But it’s just an offer – please don’t feel like you have to take me up on it.”

Clint tucks his tongue into the side of his mouth. “Can I keep my shirt on?”

“We can do it however you want.”

Nobody moves for a moment and then Clint leans over and kisses Bruce on the mouth, light but careful, like he’s reassuring himself of something and Bruce just holds still and lets himself be kissed. When Clint lies down he’s tense but not as bad as he could be. Natasha rolls back onto her stomach, making it look like a coincidence that she ends up with her elbow pressed against Clint’s hand and Steve pretends not to watch as Clint touches his fingertips to her skin.

Bruce starts slowly, feeling his way through Clint’s t-shirt as best as he can and sitting beside Clint instead of on top of him. After a while, Clint turns his head to look at him and says quietly, “You’re going to throw your back out doing it like that and then I’m going to need to give you a massage too. Just sit on me. I can take it.”

Bruce straddles Clint’s thighs and immediately looks a lot more comfortable and assured as he works his way from Clint’s lower back up to the nape of his neck. He has large hands for a man his size, something Steve has noticed before, and there is a tempered strength to the way he closes one around the back of Clint’s neck and carefully squeezes until something goes loose in Clint’s shoulders with a deep sigh. Clint’s head is turned to the side, facing away from Steve and Natasha, but Steve can still see the exact moment his eyes finally fall closed.

“You don’t carry a lot of tension, do you?” Bruce asks after a while. Clint’s eyes flicker open for a second before closing again.

“Not really.” He brushes his fingers against Natasha’s elbow. “After you, I’m probably the most Zen guy on this team.”

That makes Bruce let out a laugh that’s only a little bitter around the edges. “Oh, Harlem might have a thing or two to say about how Zen I am.”

“New York’s a pretty tough old broad.” Steve looks up from where he’s tracing patterns across Natasha’s bare back. He makes sure to meet Bruce’s eye. “She’s had worse.”

“Yeah,” Bruce says. “I guess she has.”

The two of them talk quietly while Clint lies perfectly still and content beneath Bruce’s touch, only the occasional hum of pleasure or quiet groan to prove that he hasn’t actually fallen asleep. Natasha hasn’t moved from his side, but she’s conjured up a phone from somewhere and is tapping away at it as she drifts in and out of their conversation without missing a beat. Her hair is mostly dry now and full of little staticky tendrils that catch against the bed sheets and rise to follow Steve’s palm when he sweeps it two inches above her head.

She shoots him an entirely unimpressed look and then redirects her attention to Clint, nudging him in the side. “Tony says hi.”

Clint doesn’t open her eyes. “Tell him he’s a fucknugget.”

“No.”

“Fine. Tell him we’re having a massage party without him.”

“You’re a dick,” she says, but she’s tapping away at her phone anyway. “He wants to know why he wasn’t invited. Does he really not understand that he’s in a different country right now?”

“Probably not,” Bruce sighs. “I mean, he doesn’t seem to understand how time differences work. Or that not everyone wants to be called at two in the morning and listen to a twenty minute rant about the weather.”

“Maybe he’s invented something that means he can get a massage on the other side of the world,” Steve muses out loud and then feels himself getting defensive when that’s met with three identical incredulous expressions. “Hey, it’s possible! Don’t look at me like that. He invents strange things all the time. He could invent something that does that.”

Natasha consults her phone. “Yeah, he’s pretty sure that he could. And then he goes on to say exactly how… skipping _that_ … something something… Oh, he says that he’s been working on something that’ll let us talk to Thor when he’s on Asgard.”

“Really?” Steve brightens. “Science or magic?”

“Oh God, don’t ask him that,” Bruce and Clint both say at the exact same time and then exchange startled glances before Bruce continues. “That’s… kind of a touchy subject with Tony. It’s just better if we don’t mention it. Ever.”

“I just said ‘good’,” Natasha reports. “Now he’s saying that he calls dibs on a massage from Clint when he gets back and… and I’m not reading the rest of that out loud.”

Clint smirks and props his chin on his fist, eyes bright. “Yeah, tell him I don’t give happy endings so he’s going to be disappointed.”

Natasha’s smile at Tony’s response is soft but she doesn’t share it with the rest of them, just holds the phone in front of Clint to read and he snorts and turns his face into the sheets like they won’t be able to see his smile that way or hear the affection in his voice when he grumbles, “Fucknugget.”

At some point in all of that, Bruce stopped his massage and it’s only now that he seems to realise that it means he’s just straddling Clint for no good reason. “Oh. I, uh, I guess you’re done?”

“Yeah.” Clint rubs his jaw against the sheets like a contented cat. “Thanks, man. Was nice.”

Natasha tugs lightly at his hair. “Take your shirt off next time, idiot.”

“Don’t have to.” He hums and squeezes his eyes shut when she switches from pulling his hair to combing her fingers through it, nails grazing his scalp. “Got a note from my doctor.”

Bruce climbs off of Clint, settling on the edge of the bed and rubbing his knees with a rueful and slightly pained expression. “Does Tony say how much longer he’s going to be there?”

Natasha frowns at her phone and then breaks into the widest smile Steve thinks he’s ever seen from her. “Tomorrow. He’s leaving tomorrow. So… two days. He’ll be here Wednesday.”

Steve lets that sink in for a moment. “Well then.” He can feel his own smile spreading and something warm and expectant unfolding in his chest. “I guess we really do need to contact Thor.”


End file.
